Tag #153936 - Interview #78048 (lev mistetskiy)

When kolkhozes 10 started, my father heard there was going to be a Jewish kolkhoz 11 in Dnepropetrovsk region and that the Agro-Joint 12 was constructing houses for future kolkhozniki. My father went there to get information and when he returned, he and mama decided to move there. The settlement we went to consisted of one street with one- storied houses on both sides. The settlement and the street didn't have names. The Joint funded the construction, and people who arrived to work in the kolkhoz where to build their own houses. They built houses from air bricks: cut straw mixed with clay and dried in the sun. Air bricks were strong and the houses were warm in winter. They had tiled or steel sheet roofs. There were two rooms and a kitchen in each house, and sheds adjoining the houses. Like everyone else we lived in tents for about two years after we arrived at this village. My father went to the construction site every day. Then we moved into the house.

Mama bought a cow and kept it in the cow shed another part of which served as a chicken house. There were 35 houses in the village. Every family had one hectare of land for a garden. We grew corn to feed the cow and chickens on one half of our land and on the other we grew potatoes, onions, beets, beans - everything the family needed. There was no store in the village. The products were supplied from Gulyaypole, eight kilometers from our village. There was also a market in this village. Mama made butter and cottage cheese, which she sold at the market in Gulyaypole. Sometimes the chairman of the kolkhoz provided the women with a horse-drawn wagon to go to the market. Sometimes mama returned home in tears, when she failed to sell what she had taken with her.